


Golden Monsters

by icarus_chained



Series: Therianthropy [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Alternate Universe - Werecreatures, Backstory, Comrades in Arms, Escape, Families of Choice, Friendship, Gen, Homicidal Protectiveness, Kidnapping, Pack Dynamics, Protectiveness, Secrets, Space Opera, Spaceships, Transformation, Were-Creatures, Were-creature Society, forced transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 18:16:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1314475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follow-on from <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/863107">Crash-courses in Therianthropy</a>. McCoy sits Chekov down and explains some of the facts of their new universe to him. Including how Len himself came to be a werewolf, and why that ain't ever happening to anyone else on this ship, no matter what Len has to do to ensure it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden Monsters

**Author's Note:**

> Bit of a darker tone on this one, given McCoy's backstory as a wolf, and I'm possibly messing around with Len's timeline a bit? I'm not sure on the dates of his divorce relative to his starting Starfleet and/or his mercy killing his father. *shrugs sheepishly*

There was a tentative rap on the door, and a shuffle of distinctly uneager feet. Len winced, laying his padd down carefully. He'd been waiting for this for the past three hours, for Nyota to finish with her part and pass the kid on to him for the unfriendlier aspects. Didn't mean he was _ready_ for it, though. He was not looking forward to this interview.

Oh well. He had a bottle of Saurian brandy in his drawer, and had been off-shift for a half-hour already. As soon as this was done, he could go get himself thoroughly smashed, no harm, no foul. This was why it always paid to be prepared.

"Doktor?" Chekov asked softly, sticking his head carefully round the door. "May I disturb you a moment?"

Len sat back, scrubbing tiredly at his hair. Kid looked better, at least. Had his arm back attached to his shoulder, and didn't look so much like death warmed over anymore. Always good. He didn't look particularly hostile, either. Not that Len had been expecting him to, as such, but it was always nice not to be wrong about things like that.

He sighed, and waved the kid resignedly in the door. "Get in here and park yourself," he growled, bracing himself and sitting just a tad more upright in his own chair. "Let's get this sorted out, shall we?"

Chekov squinted warily at him for a second, enough to have a shadow of a flinch passing through Len, but it wasn't the wariness of a pup faced with an unfriendly alpha. Rather, it was the entirely justified wariness of a seasoned Enterpriser when faced with the prospect of trying to beard the cranky CMO in his den. Len had it on good and widespread authority that that was not a task for the faint of heart, and he felt an abrupt bubble of humour at the thought. He wondered how many of the crew would not be at _all_ surprised to find out he was a quite literal wolf at heart, after all. Heh.

Gallows humour, they said. But this _was_ the Enterprise. Damn well bloody ran on the stuff, didn't they?

"Uh. Yes, sir?" Chekov murmured, shimmying sideways into Len's office in an effort to take up as little space as humanly possible. Len snorted in exasperation, and kicked the other chair out from under the desk pointedly. The kid jumped a bit, but he sat down ready enough at the prompting.

"Been waitin' for you," Len started, feeling no desire at all to be beating around the bush in here. "Reckon Nyota told you I might have answers to certain questions, right?" He glared at the kid until Chekov nodded hurriedly, and dropped his own chin with a sigh. "Right. Well. Out with it, then. Whaddya need to know?"

Chekov blinked a few times, nonplussed, and yes, yes, Len got that he wasn't at his friendliest right now, he realised the kid could probably use some gentler handling after what he'd been through so far this evening, but Len did _not_ want to be doing this, alright? This was a job he was supposed to have left behind planetside, and damned good riddance, too. He'd always ... he'd always hated this part. Trying to shepherd the newbies in, the ones who'd been forced. He'd never wanted to be doin' that again.

So he wasn't friendly right now. A right cranky bastard, yes. But this wasn't going to be getting any easier the more they drew it out, so if the kid could hurry up in here, that'd be real nice ...

"Nyota," Chekov started, watching Len warily. "That is, Lieutenant Uhura. She said that you ... that you were like me? That you were ... They forced you. As they forced me. I wondered if that was true, Doktor?"

And he was hesitant, alright, he was steppin' warily, but there was that glint in his eyes too. That sharp, intelligent gleam that reminded Len of Jim sometimes. Damned ship was full of idiots who were too damned smart for their own good sometimes. Or for _Len's_ good, either. The kind who'd have plotted out the geometry of a minefield right before they stepped right on into it regardless, and damn the poor bastards who had to dodge the shrapnel and patch them up afterwards.

"... Reckon Nyota wouldn't lie about a thing like that," he said at last, looking at his own hands tapping gently at the padd on his desk and resolutely ignoring the kid himself. "She's not the kind who'd lie to you about stuff you need to know, kid."

"I know that," Chekov cut in, hand twitching sharply in Len's direction. "That is ... I apologise, Doktor. I didn't mean to cast aspersions. This is not ..." 

He trailed off, scowling with frustration, and Len did wince then. Alright. Okay. There was bein' a grumpy bastard, and there was actually being a bastard. He did get that.

"Nah," he said, sitting up with a wince and rubbing the back of his neck. "No, it ain't you, Chekov. Sorry. I'm a right bastard when it comes to this stuff. Don't mind me. Alright? Just ... You just ask what you need to ask, and we'll go from there, okay?"

Just ask _quickly_ , he thought desperately. Just ask quick, kid, and let me get to the drunken part of the evening that much faster, alright?

Chekov looked at him for a minute, weighed him up with the calm, steady gaze of someone who'd spent the evening being savaged by berserker werewolves and was too sanguine now to be more than curious and mildly annoyed at cranky doctors. And maybe a wee bit sympathetic as well, if Len was readin' him right, and didn't that just put the icing on the damn cake an' all.

"I thought," the navigator said quietly, "that you might have a different view of my change than Lieutenant Uhura. She told me about her family, about being raised to this. But ... I was not. Nor were you. I wondered if that might ... give you a different view. I have to choose soon. So I wondered."

Len scrubbed desperately at his face, pushing his palms up through his hair and along his skull. Feeling phantom ears flatten back against it, an old desperation gnawing gently at the back of his mind. Supposed to have left this planetside. Oh yes. Why the hell did that never work around here?

"It ain't quite the same," he started eventually, looking up at an entirely too sympathetic new werewolf. Kid had no damn right to be easier about this than Len. But then, kid'd had Nyota right of the bat. So there was that. "I didn't ... I didn't have a choice. Not even this much of one. Alright? So I'm not the best judge, okay. I'm a bitter, cranky old man. I'm not a good person to be asking, here."

Chekov frowned, leaning forward a little as he scrutinised Len's face. Sympathy, yes. Confusion. A burgeoning touch of anger, maybe. A flash of running terrified through an alien forest, shoulder torn open to the bone, the shadows closin' in. Chekov leaned in, a flash of predator comin' through that had absolutely nothin' to do with the wolf, and Len curled back away from it. Len leaned away.

"What do you mean?" Chekov asked softly, a quiet edge to his voice in the close quarters of Len's office. "Doktor? What do you mean?"

Len sighed, tired and aggravated and not able for this in the slightest. He sighed, and stabbed a finger out in Chekov's direction to back the kid off a bit, give himself some room to breathe. And then he put his hands carefully on the desk and fixed the kid with a squint-eye to keep him still for a bit.

"Nyota tell you anything about berserker packs?" he asked brusquely. Layin' it out like he was takin' a bunch of interns through a disease. Made it easier. Little bit. Wasn't that inaccurate, either. "Coulda called 'em zoo packs, either. There's a couple of names on 'em. No? Alright then. Crash course, kiddo. Pay attention, there'll be a test later."

He rubbed at his mouth a little, pulling his thoughts around into order. Chekov let him, watching him with calm, eager curiosity, ridin' light over that shine of anger still lurking in his eyes. Len ignored that for the moment. Put that aside for a minute over here.

"Okay. Nyota will have told you about natural packs. Prides, what have you. Family groups, the way they shake out. And she'll have explained the Enterprise pack, the way we work around the existing hierarchies, yes? We're crew first, pack second, 'cept when it comes to certain issues, 'cause that's the most sensible arrangement on a damned floating tin can surrounded by one-natured and aliens. There's a couple of pack models for voluntary shifters, and most of 'em boil down more or less to how people would've shook out anyway, livin' where they do and with who they're surrounded by. Most of 'em have their own quirks of arrangement, depending on who's in them and what kind of organisation they have, but that's about true for every group of people who live together ever. People is people, right?"

"... Right," Chekov murmured, quiet and contemplative still. It was a bit eerie, to be honest. There was more than a touch of Sulu in the steady, saturnine stare. Damn. Just how close _were_ those two, anyway? But. Not the subject, Len. Lets get this through and over with, shall we?

"Berserker packs ain't like that," he said, as bluntly and calmly as possible. Flexing his hands gently, a surgeon's hands with unwilling claws beneath the skin. "They're not naturally formed, either by family or by force of proximity. They're hunter packs. They're ... They're _captive_ packs. They're what happens when you get a wannabe alpha or a bunch of wannabe alphas together, and they decide they're gonna build themselves a following one way or another. Berserker packs are where the horror stories come from. They're where people like you and me get roped in. You, ah. You with me so far?"

Chekov didn't answer. Apparently, he'd decided silence was the way to go here, just watching Len calm and quiet-like. There were flashes in him. Not completely sanguine, no. There was flashes of fear, flashes of memory. There was that slow, black thread of anger running under 'em still. But looked like the kid was more content to listen than answer so far.

Alright. Len could handle that. Lecture the interns, doc. Get this lesson back on track.

"They caught me after my divorce," he stated, flat and distant. "I wasn't in the best place. Was wanderin' around where I shouldn't have been, and drunker a lot more than I should've allowed. Easy pickins, more or less. They go for them ones. Cull 'em out. People who look weak or alone. Pull you out of the crowd, gentle like, and get you out on your own where people ain't gonna be lookin' for you."

"... Sulu looked for me," Chekov interrupted. Very, very quietly, an odd thing in his eyes. A strange, faraway sort of look. Len smiled at him. Bit distant, but genuine-like.

"Yeah," he agreed, gentle too. "We're crew up here. We're family. You only looked alone, kid. You only looked defenseless. But Sulu wasn't gonna be leavin' you alone, and Jim woulda torn the planet apart lookin' for you, and soon as me and Nyota figured out what was goin' on, we'd've shown the sons of bitches what a pack really looks like down there. Promise you that one. It ain't ever gonna be for you the way it was for me. Not on this damn ship. My word as beta, and CMO besides."

Chekov blinked at him, slow and saturnine, and he was going to be a right lethal wolf if he was sticking with 'em, Len could see that now. Sly, the shyster and the flanker in the pack. Right up until he decided to stand his ground, and then you were in trouble. There was bits of Jim in Chekov, same as there were bits of Sulu. Kid had hung around with the right wrong crowd, made him a dangerous sonnuva under the innocent exterior. Made you forget he was the one firing the phasers so much of the time.

"How it was for you ...?" the kid prompted, nice and easy like. Coaxing absently, and Len bristled a bit at that. Hadn't ever liked bein' mollycoddled. Mama McCoy's boy wasn't no wiltin' flower or anything. Just ... not good about this. Never good about this.

Len stiffened, growling low in the back of this throat. Frustration, mostly. Bit of anger. That low, ever-present hate.

"Culled me out," he started again, snappish and abrupt. "Herded me out one night, up into the hills. Ain't as many of them as there used to be, but there's enough if you know the ground. Caught me. Turned me. And then ..." He snarled at himself, forced it out. "Then they kept me. Cabin somewhere, never did find it again. Kept me until there weren't no goin' back. Until I was a wolf through and through, 'til they could tell me I was a monster and not safe for decent folk no more anyway. Made it so I'd have to stay, alright? If I'd've got out, got to a clinic, might've been cured if I'd made it in time. Brought hell and brimstone down on 'em. So they made it so I couldn't do that, so they'd get to keep me at the end of it."

And then they'd used him. Gone huntin' for a doctor in the first place, gone huntin' for a weak, stupid drunk with magic hands, who'd help them keep the newbies in line. Who'd help them force more conversions, and keep the poor terrified bastards alive through it. Made him look after the pups, made him explain how things worked like he was explainin' to Chekov now.

Made him take the brunt of it if the pups stepped out of line, too. Cut ribbons out of his flanks, human-shaped or wolf, if one of those poor stupid kids said so much as a word out of place. Because they flinched into him, of course they did, the one friendly-lookin' face in the whole damn bunch, and then that was turned on them. Then the goddamn rat bastard of a false fucking alpha turned around and used him against them, and there was fire still in his gut for that, all these years later. There was still a howl in his skull, and the memory of blood in his throat, with a wounded werestag to one side, his kids whimpering behind him, and the second breaking of his hippocratic oath bleeding out in the mulch beneath his paws. 

He'd killed his father, years ago, he'd lost his wife and kid after that, and then he'd torn that bastard's throat out when he threatened his pups past bearing. It was around then he'd decided that Earth just wasn't no good for him no more. Planetside just wasn't the place for him, too much blood in the dirt and heartbreak in the sunshine. Leonard H. McCoy, battered and naked in the hills, pulled out of there by cops and the loose confederacy of the natural packs, had pulled what was left of his battered conscience back together and sworn off his home planet altogether.

Best decision he'd ever made, in hindsight. Starfleet, the Enterprise. Jim and Spock, Nyota, this damned crew. Best decision he'd ever made, even if he hadn't known it at the time, even if he'd been too goddamn empty to give a shit either way. It had paid off in the end.

And now here he was. Sitting in this tin can, in this space that was supposed to be safe, lookin' at another damned kid some bastard alpha had tried to force. And Chekov was lookin' back at him, and that slow, easy seep of anger was lyin' under the steady calm in his gaze. Chekov was lookin' back, and there was fire in the kid's gut too, look o' things.

"They keep you," Len said softly. "Berserker packs. Zoos. They keep you, and make you think you're a monster, and keep you long enough that you think that's how it's supposed to go. Think it so long, when that bastard alpha dies, sometimes you think you gotta be the next one. That you gotta keep goin' like that, keep the pack goin' like that, until all your stupid kids don't know any better either. And it just goes on. And it just keeps tearing people up, and remakin' them, until some outside force has to come in and stop it. The natural packs, at home. Sometimes Starfleet, out here. There are arrangements, most of them tacit. Sometimes the goddamn Klingons, who the hell knows, some people don't take kindly to berserk monsters stealin' their children in the night, no matter where you go. Sometimes people put a stop to it, and they don't know what they're stoppin', and that makes things dangerous for all of us. So we do it, sometimes. We stop them. Or we damn well try, at least."

Chekov blinked, long and slow. Steady, thoughtful. He leaned forward, the kid, and rested his elbows carefully on Len's desk.

"They meant to do that to me," he said carefully. Not really asking. Makin' a statement, quiet-like. "Down on that planet. They meant to turn me, and keep me if I survived. Like they did with you. Yes?"

Len half-snarled, leanin' forward himself. That fire in his gut, that howl in his head. Phantom ears laid back across his skull and phantom hackles stirring across his spine. Chekov blinked, a half-aborted shutter of almost-alarm, but met his gaze head-on. No cowed pup, this kid. Not ever gonna be, either.

"They meant to do that, yeah," Len growled, low and with that feral note in the bottom of it, the one he'd learned naked and unwilling on a Georgia hillside and never quite managed to shake afterwards. "They meant to do it to you, and they'll mean to do it to the next poor bastard on shore leave who runs afoul of 'em. And Jim ain't gonna find them, not if he don't know what he's lookin' for, though I ain't so sure of that. Him and that hobgoblin on the bridge, I ain't so sure they don't know. But it won't be easy for 'em. But me and Nyota, that's a different story. We know, kid. We know what they tried to do to you. And I promise you, whichever way you go on this, whichever way you decide, they are gonna _pay_ for havin' tried it."

He wasn't the shredded omega anymore either. Len. He wasn't that stupid drunk with the magic hands that hadn't even known what was happenin' to him. He had the scars still, the marks down his flanks and down his psyche, but he'd become somethin' different the moment he took teeth to the bastard that had forced him, and killed to keep his pack alive. If this had been a captive pack, if he'd still been stuck berserker, he'd be the alpha now, big boss by right of combat. But it wasn't. _He_ wasn't.

He was a beta, instead. He was the CMO of the Starship Enterprise, he was the damned cranky bastard in charge of sewing every idiot on board from Jim Kirk on down back together. He was the man in charge of keeping people alive, keepin' people in one piece, and that was a beta's job. The alpha to make decisions, to captain her crew, and the beta to make sure they all survived those decisions as best they could. On the one-natured crew, he shared beta with Spock to Jim's alpha. In the two-natured pack, he held it solo under Nyota. And either way, no matter what, it was his job to see that no-one managed to shred his pups ever, ever again. One-natured or two, against Klingons or Romulans or berserker packs, it was his job to look after them, and make sure they stayed in one damned piece.

And he knew, deep down in his soul, no matter how much it shredded him to think it, that he'd break oath a third time if it came to it. He'd hold out as long as he could, he'd find every other option he could to throw in front of it, but if it came to it, if it came to teeth to protect any one of 'em, he knew he'd be forsworn all over again if he had to.

They'd made him a monster on that hillside. Or more of one, anyway. He'd been the man who'd killed his father before ever they put teeth in him, he admitted that. But he'd been changed down there, too, more than just fur and claws beneath his skin, and there was no going back from it now. They'd made a wolf out of him, made an almost-alpha out of him, and there just wasn't anything to be done about it now.

Didn't have to be, maybe. Jim had a monster in him too, sometimes, somethin' that came out in the shadows of Tarsus and the Farragut. Keepin' it in check was what Len and Spock were _for_. And him, he had Nyota, who didn't put up with bullshit and was more than capable of knocking him back about twenty steps as and when he needed it. There were checks, up here. With this crew, this pride, there were always checks. That, more than anythin' else, was why this ship was safe. Most danger prone ship in the whole goddamn fleet, but paradoxically the safest damned place Len had ever, ever been. He was a monster now, but he was as safe as any monster was ever gonna get.

"... Will it distress you?" Chekov asked abruptly, startling Len out of his thoughts and about half-out of his seat, too. He blinked, staring at the kid in dumb startlement, and got ready to growl if Chekov so much has let his lip twitch. But it looked like Chekov was about as serious as he'd ever been, that thing in his eyes heavy and earnest, and one hand curled lightly over his healing shoulder. He tipped his head at Len's confused look, and elaborated carefully. "If I have the choice you were refused, and choose to stay like this anyway. If I choose to remain like the ones who did this to us. Will that ... will that distress you, Doktor? Will it hurt you?"

Len blinked some more. Shook his head stupidly. He shuffled himself back upright, rapped his knuckles around his skull until he'd beaten some sort of order back into his thoughts. And then he looked at the kid, at his crewmate and his friend, and he made sure his expression was dead earnest as he answered.

"It don't work like that," he said, rough and sure. "Maybe it woulda done, back in the beginning. I'm a bitter old man, kid, don't ever get me wrong. But ... It doesn't work like that anymore. I'm not ... I've met too many people. Nyota. The ones who pulled me off that hillside in the first place. More. Whatever it woulda worked like then, it don't work like that anymore. Not up here. Not with these people. Alright?"

He winced, rubbed his chin some more. Tried to work out how to put it.

"If you wanna stay like this, if you wanna be pack and pride with me and Nyota, that's not the same as them. That's not what they meant for you. I swear on gods and little fishes, kid, it won't ever be like them. This is ... This is why Nyota does this part, she's better at this than me. I'm not the person to ask, I told you that in the first place. The only way I see it is ... You're mine. If you're one of us, you're _mine_. Same as you're Jim's just for bein' on the ship. You follow me? That's all it's gonna mean. You're just gonna be another two-natured nincompoop that I gotta shepherd around this tin can, and the only difference between that and being a _one_ -natured nincompoop is that sometimes we'll have fur on, and sometimes when I'm snappin' yer fool head off, it ain't gonna be figurative. If that's alright with you."

Chekov laughed at him. Snorting, helpless snickers, his eyes bright and warm and casually malevolent on Len's. "I'm ... I'm sure it will be fine, Doktor," he managed, grinning stupidly right back at Len. "Not so different from normal then, yes?"

"Yes," Len said dryly, remembering his earlier musings. "I've been a wolf the whole damn time, kid. You ain't gonna see much you ain't seen already. Well. Beyond the furry bits, anyway." And then, darkening a touch. "And maybe somethin' else, when me and Nyota go down there. Jim too, maybe. Might see something else then ..."

Chekov darkened in his turn, that slow anger seeping back up through the amusement, that gentle, almost absent hatred. His hand brushed back over his shoulder, over the fading wound.

"Perhaps you will see something then too," the kid murmured softly, almost lightly, and smiled a crooked smile at Len. "Perhaps you will see what you should have seen when they took you." He shrugged carefully. "Hikaru came for me. If someone tries to take you again, Doktor, I think Hikaru and I will being coming for you too. The Keptin first, of course. Lieutenant Uhura. It is polite to let the alphas go first, yes? But afterwards. Afterwards, I think Hikaru and I will be happy to show them something also."

Len stared. Caught flat, all he could do was stare, and Chekov smiled gently at him. The damnable bastard. Chekov, head-on in the face of the wolf, was still determined to be gentle, and mollycoddle his bitter old bastard of a CMO.

"I will be the wolf, I think," the kid went on, calm and implacable. "I would like to learn, to experience. There is another world that Lieutenant Uhura shows me, and I think I will enjoy discovering it. But there are other reasons. Starfleet, we do not come out here just to explore. We come out here to protect, no? To keep people safe. And you say there are people who will do these things. Hurt people like this. And out here, it is people like us who stop them, because we know how. I think ... I think I would like to do that. I think I would like to stop them, before they hurt people like us again. I think I would like to make sure that no-one is allowed to be hurt like this again."

... Monsters, Len thoughts distantly. Golden monsters, floating out in the dark and the void. Not the wolf, not the lion. None of that. It was Jim's fault, is what it was. Wasn't even the werecurse, it was the _Enterprise_. It was the crew of the Starship goddamned Enterprise, and all those breaches she kept once-moreing into, and all these people who kept her flying through them. She damn well called them. Called the lioness from the United States of Africa, called the captain from the ruins of Tarsus, called the bloody hobgoblin from where he'd been stuck between two worlds, called a goddamn stupid drunk with magic hands from a hillside in Georgia. He couldn't swing a goddamn cat on this thrice-damned ship and not hit one of 'em.

They were family up here. They were pride and pack and crew and family, and they were monsters all in their worst moments, and they were the most gorgeous, noble set of damned monsters he'd ever lived with in his life. Heaven help him anyway. What the sodding hell was he meant to do, trying to keep these idiots in one damned piece?

But they were the ship in the breach, every time. They were the scarred wolf with blood in their teeth and their kids safe behind their backs, and it was damn well going to stay that way, if Jim and Len and Nyota Uhura had any damn thing to say about it. It was never going to be otherwise, because they'd never been meant to be here, and they were too damn screwed up to be anywhere else.

And it mattered, he thought. Leaning silently over his desk to rest his hand in Chekov's, in Pavel's, and smile distantly at the dark, lazy wolf behind the kid's teeth. It mattered, what they were, what they meant to each other. It mattered that Chekov said he'd come for him and meant it, it mattered that Len would be forsworn to see the kid safe. It had to count for something, because it was more than Len had ever dreamed of having again.

"Welcome to the Enterprise pride, kid," he said softly, distantly. "We're the worst damn pack of madmen you'll ever meet, but you oughta be used to that by now. Keep yer teeth to yourself unless you get a nod, for gods sake don't change on top of the one-natured unless it's an emergency, and if you're foolin' around you'd best not put us in danger because of it or I promise you you'll be remembering Jim's anger with real and desperate fondness real quick, you got it?"

Chekov nodded, serene and unperturbed, that dark little shine of mischief in his eyes, and the anger, and the earnest acknowledgement. Baby wolf, but not ever less than a man. Not much different than before, just with some teeth to back up his phasers in the breach.

Not much different than before, no. Because on the Starship goddamned Enterprise, what the hell difference did a little therianthropy make, hmm? With all the bloody messes they got into, what difference did it make which of 'em where one-natured and which of 'em were two?

Not much at all, he thought. In the end, not damned much at all.

Odd, how comforting a thought that could be, don't you think?


End file.
